Jessica A. Johnson commentary: History classes still are lacking in black perspective

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Sunday February 16, 2014 7:40 AM

As Black History Month celebrations have been taking place at schools, libraries and churches
around the nation, a complex question has been put forward within recent years: Is Black History
Month still relevant?

Those who argue that the February observance of African-American culture can be put aside point
to the racial progress we have made within the past five decades. Blacks are no longer absent from
mainstream American society, as tremendous gains in politics, education, the arts and business are
well-known. And critics of Black History Month contend the crowning achievement for this generation
is the election of Barack Obama as our 44th president.

While these are valid claims, they do not fully take into consideration the primary reason
Carter G. Woodson began what was initially known as Negro History Week. Racial advancement was
definitely one of Woodson’s concerns, which he voiced in his classic 1933 book
The Mis-Education of the Negro.

However, as an educator and historian, one of Woodson’s main objectives was to change the way
history was taught in U.S. schools. In 1915, Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro
Life and History, which was a professional organization that supported the scholarship of black
historians and launched Negro History Week in 1926. Woodson also hoped that Negro History Week,
which would become a month-long celebration in 1976, no longer would be needed once the
contributions of black Americans were adequately represented in school textbooks.

Woodson had a difficult time compiling the historical legacy that we honor in February, and some
of the opposition to researching black history came from black scholars. In the first chapter of
The Mis-Education of the Negro, titled “The Seat of the Trouble,” Woodson recalled the
refusal of a black college’s faculty member to design a black-history class.

Woodson wrote, “An officer of a Negro university, thinking that an additional course on the
Negro should be given there, called upon a Negro Doctor of Philosophy of the faculty to offer such
work. He promptly informed the officer that he knew nothing about the Negro. He did not go to
school to waste his time that way.”

Another challenge during Woodson’s era was the intense debate on whether blacks should receive
an industrial or classical education. It was thought by many during the late 1920s that blacks
needed to learn a trade first.

Today numerous colleges and universities offer graduate programs in African-American studies,
and Woodson, along with W.E.B. DuBois, is a founding father of this academic field. History
textbooks in public schools do document some of the contributions of prominent
African-Americans.

At the college level, most students have learned about notables such as Harriet Tubman, Rosa
Parks, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Langston Hughes and Jackie Robinson. This is a good
foundation, but there are other black trailblazers whose lives are linked with these famous
individuals.

For example, before Tubman began leading slaves to freedom through the Underground Railroad, a
black woman named Maria W. Stewart became the first American woman to lecture publicly on race and
politics in Boston, beginning in 1832.

In addition to demanding the end of slavery, Stewart was opposed to the West Africa colonization
movement, and she fought for women’s rights.

In explaining the obstacles Robinson faced breaking Major League Baseball’s color barrier,
students would better understand how segregation was entrenched in pro sports by including the
history of the Negro National League and its founder, Andrew “Rube” Foster.

A yearlong history curriculum in public schools would not be able to cover the achievements of
all black historical figures. Yet, we can move closer to what Woodson envisioned by intersecting
the stories of African-American pioneers that are closely connected to the icons students celebrate
every February. There still is a need for Black History Month, as completely integrating black
history into American history remains a work in progress.

Jessica A. Johnson is a columnist for The Athens (Ga.) Banner-Herald and the author of the
newly released book Salt of the Earth Georgia Boy.